GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 204800 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (about 272%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103000 (272%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (more or less 137%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (137%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.